Like I said, the air force is great because you don't have to die (Army) or live in a submarine/boat (Navy)
..and we have the best kill:death ratio of any service anywhere, ever. And we send our officers out to fight while the enlisted stay home and play cards.
I don't think what the Air Force does qualifies as "fight". There's a reason why officers chuse to do it. (Not that it's entirely risk-free; I understand that.)
Doesn't the Air Force fly/operate the AC-130s? They kick a lot of ass, don't they?
Shooting at people =|= fighting.
But "shooting at people, while being shot at" = fighting.
At least sort of. It's certainly not pleasant, but a lot of the definition of "fighting" is still missing. (And of course, you could die in a plane even in Iraq. And people did. Although this is often only indirectly caused by enemy fire, I don't think that'd matter to me when I'm dead.) But even when the enemy has proper air defense, I'm pretty sure that bomber crews' mortality rates were
rather less than infantry's (that actually saw combat).